Cafe Culture

One of my favourite things to do, in any city, is to go sit in a café by myself to read, write, think, and linger over a coffee. Buenos Aires is a great city for that because there are cute, cozy cafes on every corner. No matter what time of day, they seem to be always full of people, either sitting by themselves with a book or chatting with friends. Coffee is served European-style, espresso accompanied by a small glass of agua con gaz and a small sweet. And so far it’s very tasty, better than what I’ve been drinking at home. No one seems to mind if you sit there for hours--it's all very relaxed and they only bring the bill when you ask for it.

I can definitely see the European influence that is usually the first thing anyone says about Buenos Aires. Yesterday, sitting in a Parisian-style brasserie café, there was something very familiar about sitting there with my botella de agua con gaz (I had ordered a coffee but he told me “no tienen agua” – we don’t have water – and that they couldn’t make coffee, and something about the reaction of a woman who came in after me told me that this was not an unusual occurrence).

I'm slowly improving my Spanish and try to practice whenever I can. I've caught on to the Argentinian pronunciation (the "ll" and "y" are pronounced "sh," unlike in other Spanish-speaking countries) and am slowly learning to understand people. This week I have classes from 2:00-6:00 p.m. every day. It's a small group of six students, and I lucked out and got an excellent teacher. Let's see how far I get by the end of the week...